More $$ for higher education

Speaking with Newsday after the launch of the Multi-Sector Skills Training Programme (MUST) in Westmoorings yesterday, Abdul-Hamid hinted that when Prime Minister Patrick Manning presents the next Budget in Parliament in just over a month’s time, a significant chunk of those funds will be going toward education.

Since 2002, education has been one of the main beneficiaries of the Government’s annual budgets. In the last Budget, the most significant financial allocations went to the Ministries of Education, Health, National Security, Works and Transport and Science, Technology and Tertiary Education. Sources hint that these ministries will feature prominently in the upcoming budget.

"We expect to get as much funding as we need, as much funding as we have the capacity to spend because the Government has established education as the number one priority," the minister said. He added that "even if tertiary education were to achieve free, UWI would not be able to offer all the educational opportunities that the country needs."

Abdul-Hamid said one of his ministry’s main priorities in the next fiscal year will be to continue to increase the levels of enrollment at TT’s public and private tertiary level institutions. He explained that although student enrollment at UWI’s St Augustine campus had increased over the last three years from 8,000 to 13,000 students, and private tertiary level institutions were doing their fair share, "there is need for more opportunities and this is the basis upon which we decided to establish the University of TT (UTT)."

With $500 million already earmarked for the first phase of UTT’s main campus at Wallerfield and the ability of the campus to initially house 6,000 students, Abdul-Hamid was optimistic that the population will soon begin to see the new university taking shape.

The minister added that upgrades of $25 million and $27.4 million at the John Donaldson and San Fernando Technical Institutes, along with expansion of the College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts of TT (Costaatt) courses, over the last three years have also increased the capacity of TT’s tertiary level institutions.